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For commentary, info and to add your own comments, click here or on the discussion tab above. ---- Introduction Page One ... Page Two ... Page Three ... Without Commentary ... Cleary Translation ... Shinjin-No-Mei D.T.Suzuki ---- A translation known as Faith Mind by Clark is a W.I.P. as is the original Chinese ---- :::::''HsinHsinMing :::::(with commentary) :THERE IS NOTHING DIFFICULT ABOUT THE GREAT WAY, :BUT, AVOID CHOOSING! :We suffer, at one and the same time, from excessive pride and :excessive humility. On the one hand, our intellect rushes in :where angels fear to tread. On the other hand, we are too humble :before the Buddhas and saints, not realizing that we too are the :Buddha, as the "Avatamsaka" ("Kegonkyo") declares: :''The mind, the Buddha, living creatures, -- :''these are not three different things. :Haiku are divided, rather arbitrarily, into seven sections: :The Season, Sky and Elements, Fields and Mountains, Gods and Buddhas, :Human Affairs, Animals and Birds, Trees and Flowers. :With all these but one, the fifth, in the petals of the barley leaf, :the tender smile on the lips of Kwannon, the moonlight on the valley :stream, the voices of insects in autumn, the coldness of winter, :we can see the Great Way that stretches out in every direction, :throughout past, present and future. :But when we come to man, to ourselves, it is a different story. :''So, beneath the starry dome :''And the floor of plains and seas, :''I have never felt at home, :''Never wholly been at ease. :''The First Day of the Year: :''I remember :''A lonely autumn evening. :~ Basho ~ :''Scattering rice too, :''This is a sin: :''The fowls are fighting each other. :~ Issa ~ :In "The Sphinx", Emerson tells us: :''Erect as a sunbeam, :''Upspringeth the palm; :''The elephant browses, :''Undaunted and calm. :''But man crouches and blushes, :''Absconds and conceals; :''He creepeth and peepeth, :''He palters and steals. :In other words, Sengtsan, in declaring that the Way in not :difficult, is flatly contradicting the experience of mankind both :in regard to the complexities of ordinary life and the perception :of the natural poetry of apparently unpoetical things. :His meaning is faintly adumbrated by the well known verse of Yamazaki :Sokan, d. 1553, included in a collection of poems he made called :"Inutsukuba": :''How I wish to kill! :''How I wish :''Not to kill! :''The thief I have caught :''Is my own son. :This corresponds to the English proverb, :''He who follows truth too closely, will have dirt kicked into his face. :''It is the very search, and the excessive zeal of it, which causes the :''truth to disappear. In our hot grasp the truth wilts away. :''There is no one :''Who dyes them, :''But of themselves :''The willow is green, :''The flowers red. :If we just remain quiet, and live in all simplicity, no problems arise. :''Were I a king, pensively :''Would I pace the corridors of the palace. :''The path I walk goes through the pine-trees; :''The sea is blue, a butterfly flits by. ~ Miyoshi Tatsuji :Sengtsan attributes all our uneasiness, our dissatisfaction with :ourselves and other people, our inability to understand why we are :alive at all, to one great cause: choosing this and rejecting that, :clinging to the one and loathing the other. :There is a profound saying: :''The flowers fall, for all our yearning; :''Grasses grow, regardless of our dislike. :Other verses that express this fact of the life that comes from :the death of self and its wants and distastes, are the following: :''Just get rid :''Of that small mind :''That is called "self", :''And there is nothing in the universe :''That can harm or hinder you. :''How delightful it is :''To make all space :''Our dwelling place! :''Our hearts and minds :''Are perfectly at ease. :D.H.Lawrence says the same thing in "Kangaroo": :''Home again. But what was home? The fish has vast ocean for home. :''And man has timelessness and nowhere. "I won't delude myself with :''the fallacy of home", he said to himself. "The four walls are a :''blanket I wrap around in, in timelessness and nowhere, to go to :''sleep". :ONLY WHEN YOU NEITHER LOVE NOR HATE :DOES IT APPEAR IN ALL CLARITY :There is love and Love, but only hate; there is no such thing as :Hate. In Love is included that which might be called Hate, what :Lawrence calls "the dark side of love". In so far as we love, in :the sense of being attached to a thing, we hate. In so far as we :Love, whether it be with pain or joy, the Way is walked in by us, :we are the Way. Ryoto, a pupil of Basho, says: :''Yield to the willow :''All the loathing, :''All the desire of your heart. :Another didactic verse is the following: :''In my hut this spring, :''There is nothing, :''There is everything. :~ Sodo ~ (1641-1716) :A HAIR'S BREADTH OF DEVIATION FROM IT, :AND A DEEP GULF IS SET BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH. :A miss is as good as a mile. The slightest thought of self, that :is, by self, and the Great Way is irretrievably lost. A drop of :ink, and a glass of clear water is all clouded. Once we think, :"This flower is blooming for me; this insect is a hateful :nuisance and nothing else; that man is a useful rascal; that :woman is a good mother, and she must therefore be a good wife", :-- when such thoughts arise in our minds, all the cohesion :between things disappear; they rattle about in a meaningless and :irritating way. Instead of being united into a whole by virtue of :their own interpenetrated suchness, they are pulled hither and :thither by our arbitrary and ever-changing preferences, out whims :and prejudices. We suppose this particular man to be a Buddha, :ourselves to be ordinary people, this action to be charming, that :to be odious, and fail to see how "All things work for good" :(Romans VIII, 28). In actual fact, Heaven and Earth cannot be :separated; one cannot exist without the other. :Together they are the Great Way. :The two points to bear in mind are first the nearness of the Way :and second, its corollary, the fact that we and the Way are not :two things. It seems so far that we can never attain to it: :''Far, far from here :''Is the Heavenly Land, :''A million million miles away; :''We can hardly get there :''On just one pair of straw sandals. :But as Ikkyu punningly says: :''Paradise is in the West; :''It is in the East also. :''Look for it in the North :''That you came through, :''It is all in yourself (the South). :is a pun on the Japanese words : *minami*, south, and *mina mi*, all oneself. :The moment you place your happiness in the fulfillment of any want :or wish, that is, outside yourself, outside the Way, in anything :but the thing as it is, as it is becoming, at that moment your :balance is lost and you fall straight from Heaven to Hell. :Things are one; things are many. The intellect cannot grasp these :two simultaneously, but experience can, if it will. If we fall, :only by a hair's breadth, into the error of supposing that we are :different, weariness and envy and triumph and shame and fear :succeed one another in an endless train. We must be in the :condition that Paul describes: :''Who is weak and I am not weak? :''Who is offended and I burn not? (Corinthians, XI, 29) :If this state could only be attained, we can say of man with :Matthew Arnold in "A Summer Night": :''How boundless might his soul's horizons be, :''How vast, yet of what clear transparency. :IF YOU WANT TO GET HOLD OF WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE, :DO NOT BE ANTI OR PRO ANYTHING. :Since the Great Way is one, it is impossible for us to be for :this, and aiding that which needs no aid. There is a certain :current, a Flow of the universe. We may swim with it or against :it, float in the middle of the stream or stagnate in a :back-water, but nothing we can do will accelerate or retard that :Flow. Yet his Flow is not something separate from ourselves; it :is our own flowing; we are not corks bobbing up and down on a :stream of inevitability. It is not as Fitzgerald says: :''The Ball no question makes of Ayes or Noes, :''But Here or There as strikes the Player goes. :Or rather, it would be better to say that this is true, and that :Henley's words are equally true, not in alternation but :synchronously: :''I am the master of my fate; :''I am the captain of my soul. :This submergence and assertion of self, this living fully without :taking sides which Sengtsan urges upon us, is the poetical life. :The unpoetical life is of two kinds. First, by aversion, we live :in a limited world, a half-world. Second, by infatuation, we :exaggerate, sentimentalize, weary by repetition. :THE CONFLICT OF LONGING AND LOATHING, :THIS IS JUST THE DISEASE OF THE MIND. :Something arises which pleases the mind, which fits in with our :notions of what is profitable for us, -- and we love it. :Something arises which thwarts us, which conflicts with our :wants, and we hate it. So long as we possess this individual :mind, enlightenment and delusion, pain and pleasure, accepting :and rejecting, good and bad toss us up and down on the waves of :existence, never moving onwards, always the same restlessness and :wabbling, the same fear of woe and insecurity of joy. So :Wordsworth say, in the "Ode to Duty": :''My hopes must no more change their name. :In addition, the mirror of our mind being distorted, nothing :appears in its natural, its original form. The louse appears a :dirty, loathsome thing, the lion a noble creature. But when we :see the louse as it really is, it is not merely neutral thing; it :is something to be accepted as inevitable in our mortal life, as :in Basho's verse: :''Fleas, lice, :''The horse pissing :''By my pillow. :It may be seen as something charming and meaningful as in Issa's haiku: :''Giving the breast, :''While counting :''The flea-bites. :There is nothing intrinsically more beautiful or poetical about :the moon than about a dunghill; if anything, the contrary, for :the latter is full of life and warmth and energy. :The "Vaipulya-mahavyuha Sutra" says: :''The lotus arises form the mud, but is not dyed therewith. :This is expressed less ambitiously in the following waka: :''Just get rid of :''The mind that thinks :"This is good, that is bad", :And without any special effort, :''Wherever we live is good to live in. :Quite devoid of sententiousness or literary ambition, with no :longing or loathing, Basho's verse on the mountain violets: :''Coming along the path, :''There is something touching :''About these violets. :NOT KNOWING THE PROFOUND MEANING OF THINGS, :WE DISTURB OUR (ORIGINAL) PEACE OF MIND TO NO PURPOSE. :When we are in the Way, when we act without live or hate, hope or :despair of indifference, the meaning of things if self-evident, :not merely impossible but unnecessary to express. Conversely, :while we are looking for the significance of things, it is :non-existent. Our original nature is one of perfect harmony with :the universe, a harmony not of similarity or correspondence nut of :identity. The "Tsaikentan" ("Seikontan") Hung Yingming. fl. :1600 A.D. A compound of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. :says: :''The mind that is free form itself, -- why should it look within? :''This introspection taught by Buddha only increases the :''obstruction. Things are originally one; why then should we :''endeavour to unite them? Chuangtse preached the identity of :''contraries, thus dividing up that unity. :PERFECT LIKE GREAT SPACE, :THE WAY HAS NOTHING LACKING, NOTHING IN EXCESS. :Without beginning, without end, without increase or decrease, the :Great Way is perfect, like a circle, with nothing too small in :the smallest thing, nothing too large in the largest. And this :perfection in the dew-drop and in the solar system we are :enabled to see, we are driven to see, by the perfection in :ourselves. Beyond all this confusion and asymmetry there is a :deep harmony and proportion without us and within us that :satisfies us when we submit to it, when we take it as it is, but :can never be perceived or conceived intellectually. This supreme :Form of Things is called "Formlessness" in the "Hannyashingyo": :''All things are formless, without growth or decay, without purity :''or sin, without increase or decrease. :In poetry the three are expressed as follows: :''Age cannot wither her not custom stale :''Her infinite variety. :("Anthony and Cleopatra", II, 2) :''The young girl :''Blew her nose :''In the evening glory. :~ Issa ~ :''The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; :''the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall. :(Bacon, "Of Goodness") :In poetry as in life, too much soon wearies. This is why we turn :to Virgil, to Chaucer, to Basho. The circle expresses this :moderation however large or small it may be. In the Oxherding :pictures used in Zen, it portrays serenity. The circular mirror :is used in Shinto. Emerson has an essay on Circles. :TRULY, BECAUSE OF OUR ACCEPTING AND REJECTING, :WE HAVE NOT THE SUCHNESS OF THINGS. :Our state of mind is not to be fatalistic, saying of bad things, :"It can't be helped", and of good things, "What difference does :it make?" It must be to want what the universe wants, in the way :it wants it, in that place, at that time. This wanting *is* the :Way, this wanting *is* the suchness of things; there is no Way, :no suchness apart from it. :The suchness of things is what the poet is looking for, listening :to, smelling, and tasting. And in so far as he and we listen and :touch and see, the suchness has an existence, a meaning, a value. :Unless we taste the world, it is tasteless; it is void of :suchness. But this tasting is not to be a choosing, tasting some :and not tasting others. Hung Yingming, following Chuangtse, and :using almost the same words as Sengtsan, says: :''All the things in heaven and earth, all human emotions, :''all the things that happen in the world, when looked at :''by the unenlightened eye, are seen as multifarious and :''disparate. When viewed by the Eye of the Way, all this :''variety is uniformity; why should we distinguish them, :''why accept these and reject those? :NEITHER FOLLOW AFTER, NOR DWELL WITH :THE DOCTRINE OF THE VOID. :We are not to be beguiled by the senses, by the apparent :differences of things. :''Rain, hail and snow, :''Ice too, are set apart, :''But when they fall, -- :''The same water :''Of the valley stream. :On the other hand, we are not to fall into the opposite error of :taking all things as unreal and meaningless. This is the basis of :much of the poetical thinking of Swinburne, of Shelley and Byron. :It tinges the poetry of Matthew Arnold, Clough, Christina :Rossetti. It is the basis of all passive, quietistic thought. :Both these extreme views are wrong; Yungchia describes the :position in the following way: :''Getting rid of things and clinging to emptiness :''Is an illness of the same kind; :''It is just like throwing oneself into a fire :''To avoid being drowned. :IF THE MIND IS AT PEACE, :THESE WRONG VIEWS DISAPPEAR OF THEMSELVES. :Dogen has a waka: :''Ever the same, :''Unchanged of hue, :''Cherry blossoms :''Of my native place: :''Spring now has gone. :Here the eternal and temporal, the unchanged and changing are :one, because the flowers are allowed to be the same colour as :always; they are allowed to fall as always. The flowers are not :separated, in their blooming and in their falling, from the poet :himself, nut neither is it a dream world, an eternal world where :all is vanity. It is a world of form and colour, of change and :decay, yet it is beyond time and place, a world of truth. A verse :by Gyosei Shonin, :''All the various :''Flowers of spring, :''Tinted leaves of autumn, :''Tokens in this world :''Untainted with falsity. :The ordinary world and the world of reality are here one; life :and death are Nirvana. The great mistake of life and of poetry :is the desire to get away from things, instead of getting into :them, escaping form this world into the dream world. Yet even :this world of day-dreams, of escapist poetry, Wagnerian music :and pictures of Paradise, is also a way of life, is also, when we :realize it, the Great Way. Thus it is again that enlightenment is :ignorance, salvation is damnation, Heaven and Hell are one self :place. :WHEN ACTIVITY IS STOPPED AND THERE IS PASSIVITY, :THIS PASSIVITY AGAIN IS A STATE OF ACTIVITY. :The modern theories of repression may be taken as an example of :the meaning of this verse. When we thwart nature, suppress our :instincts, control our desires, the energy thus restricted and :yet augmented is still active, and may at any time burst forth :with volcanic force in some unsuspected direction. :''Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret. :In the poetic life precisely the same thing happens. Only the :charming, picturesque aspects of nature, only innocuous creatures :are described. :But this is only one half of life or less; this is not the Way at :all. But all day and every day, Nature is giving us all kinds of :experiences, ghastly as well as pleasant. Germs of disease are :attacking us, wives are unfaithful, children ungrateful, the :cesspool awaits us, cats catch mice, and men kill one another. In :tragic drama, a great deal of this is expressed, but in general :poetry, vast tracts are omitted. A glance at the list of subjects :for Haiku [See the author's ''"Haiku", four vols.] shows us how :limited they are. Here and there a snake shows its head, a :dustbin or a corpse appear, but these are rare until we come to :modern times. :But whatever the subject may be, there must be what Wordsworth :calls "a wise passiveness", that is, an active rest, such as we :find described in the following haiku: :I came to the flowers; :''I slept beneath them; :''This is my leisure. : ~ Buson ~ :In regard to everything, the double, compensatory use of things :must never be lost sight of. In summer, we like airy, spacious :rooms. but the ceiling is low and the walls press in on us. Let :us bear it gladly: :''My hut has a low ceiling: :''What happiness, :''In this winter seclusion! : ~ Buson ~ :"Every ceiling is a good ceiling", not merely sometimes, but :always, for this means that it is good by the mere fact of being :what it is. And what is it? It is a no-ceiling, it is nothing, it :is everything, it is what we make it, -- and yet it is a ceiling, :and a low ceiling at that, in all the four seasons, hot in summer, :snug in winter. :REMAINING IN MOVEMENT OF QUIESCENCE, :HOW SHALL YOU KNOW THE ONE? :Not only movement and quiescence but enlightenment and illusion, :life and death and Nirvana, salvation and damnation, profit and :loss, this and that, -- all these are our lot and portion from :moment to moment, if we do not realize that the Great Way is one :and indivisible however we delude ourselves that we have divided it. :NOT THOROUGHLY UNDERSTANDING THE UNITY OF THE WAY, :BOTH (ACTIVITY AND QUIESCENCE) ARE FAILURES. :In other words, mere activity, activity without quiescence, mere :quiescence without its inner activity, are no good, neither has :its proper quality and function. Freedom is impossible without :law, man is nothing without God, illusion non-existent except for :enlightenment, this is this because that is that. ut freedom and :law, illusion and enlightenment, this and that are two names of :one thing. Unless this is realized (in practical life) none of :these is its real self. This is not this until and unless it is :that; only when the two are one are they really two. :In practical life, this means that the composure we feel at home :among our family, is only an illusion that is broken when we go :out into the world and meet with vexation and disappointment, :becoming irritated and depressed. Our activity when playing chess :is not the true activity, as we see when we are beaten and our :opponent's face and voice become hateful to us. It lacks the :balance that preserves the mind from spite though we properly :enough feel gloomy at losing. :In the poetical life it is equally important that we realize, :through each all of the senses, that true diversity is the unity. :Even in the scientific world, the nature, for example, of a :many-legged caterpillar is only understood when we know it is a :six-legged insect. The nature of feathers, skin, nails, scales, :and so on is perceives when we find that they are all one thing. :The poet delights is all the many names of things, because he :knows in his heart that as Laotse said, :''The name that can be named is not an eternal name. :''All the various :''Difficult names, -- :''Weeds of Spring. : ~ Shado :More specifically referring to the present verse of Sengtsan, we :may note that the poet has to regulate his creative and receptive :functions, that is, to unify them, otherwise the true fruit of :each will be list. On the one hand we get the effusions of :Swinburne, of Keats and Shelley, with their kaleidoscope of :words; on the other, the didactic and descriptive verses that :have nothing of the author in them, only the outside and shell of :things. A great many haiku suffer from the absence of the life of :the poet himself, whose abnegation is excessive, for example: :''The thatcher :''Is treading the fallen leaves :''Over the bed-room. : ~ Buson ~ :IF YOU GET RID OF PHENOMENA, ALL THINGS ARE LOST; :IF YOU FOLLOW AFTER THE VOID, YOU TURN YOUR BACK :'''ON THE SELF-LESSNESS OF THINGS. :In this translation, the first is taken as things as they :appear to us, the second as Real Things; the first as :Emptiness, unreality, the second as the Real Self-less Nature :of things. If we suppose that all things are illusion, that :everything is meaningless in the ordinary sense of the word, we :are misunderstanding the doctrine that all is mind, and losing :our grasp on the reality outside us. The difficulty is to hold :firmly in the mind the two contradictory elements. :In the early morning we work out into the garden and see a spider :finishing its web. With skill and assiduity all is completed, and :it sits in the centre, a thing of beauty with its duns and deep :blue of arabesque designs. A butterfly flits by, drops too low :and is immediately struggling in the mesh. The spider, though not :hungry, approaches, seizes it in his jaws and poisons it. He :returns to the centre of the web, leaving a mangled creature for :a future meal. A nation conquers the then known world and :organizes it with intelligence and ability; a great man appears, :is caught and nailed to a cross, a spectacle for all ages and :generations. These two examples are identical, despite the :addition of intelligence, morality, and religion to the second. :Both are to be seen exactly in the same way though with differing :degrees of intensity. Whether your children are killed by God :(allias an earthquake) or by God (allias a robber) or by God :(allias old age) the killing is to be received in the same way. :One's attitude to the earthquake and to the robber as such is :different, since these two things are intrinsically different. :In the poetical attitude we must have the same lack of censure. :Our response to things must be similar to that of Maupassant, :Somerset Maugham, D.H.Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, in so far as they :have no hatred for the villains or love of the heroes. ---- Introduction Page One ... Page Two ... Page Three ... Without Commentary ... Cleary Translation ... Shinjin-No-Mei D.T.Suzuki ---- A translation known as Faith Mind by Clark is a W.I.P. as is the original Chinese ---- Category:-ts-